That Weird Gallery Shine

Have you ever been to one of those contemporary galleries in the nice part of town? You know, the ones right next to the gallery with the art you actually wanted to see? (Or maybe you didn't want to see it; really, someone just dragged you there. Either way.) You wander in against your better judgment, neck craning warily as you pass that horrible, kitschy sculpture tending the door. By now you're past the point of no return, the gallery attendant having spotted you, smiling invitingly. It's far too late to mime, 'Oh snap, I didn't mean to walk into this art gallery, I was looking for that new J. Crew that just opened up.' Nope, you're committed. So you do your duty, don an inquisitive look, and step inside.

There are myriad endings to this story, many of them involving seas of vibrantly colored flowers and/or some form of modern day impressionism, but the thing that struck me last week was shine. While visiting the oddly posh little town of Ketchum, Idaho, and playing out the scenario I've just described, I found myself surrounded by some very vaguely Rauschenbergian, maybe slightly Sean Scullyish, but not, assemblage sort of paintings by a man called Jeff Fontaine. The works were stale and golden-hued; pleasant, unexciting conglomerations of shapes and colors; and very, very shiny. As though they'd all been dipped in vats of resin. This coating was of no discernible benefit to the paintings — they'd have been bad with or without it — and it occurred to me that I'd seen the same sort of shine before, in all manner of similarly positioned art spaces. But if it didn't improve the work, then why?

Time was, of course, all paintings were covered in a layer of lacquer. This layer protected the paint underneath and could be removed and reapplied when it yellowed or was otherwise sullied, but it's well over a century now since that went out of vogue. If Fontaine were truly going for "the innate beauty created as man made objects break down and naturally age," as it says in his artist statement, you'd think he would want to highlight different textures and surfaces, in addition to patterns and colors. Yet every piece featured the same glossy shine.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed to glossy as a rule. Heck, Henry Schoebel has his paintings coated at an auto body shop before they go to the gallery, and many of those painters of bygone centuries relied on their lacquer to provide an essential depth or luminosity. But Schoebel's work is about being absurd; and while lacquer may have been standard procedure in the nineteenth century — the first half — Fontaine and others like him don't have that to fall back on. Far from adding depth, this new shine tends to resemble the candy glaze you see on pastries more than anything else. Those you at least get to taste. This shine is merely an attractive wrapper, a pretty package over an otherwise rather dull product. But maybe that's just it. That glassy outer layer is the candy coating, playing on our experiences with foods and jewels and plastics. Just as Prometheus enticed Zeus with delicious, glistening fat, and toy makers grab kids with bright colors, these galleries trap rich people with that distinctly over-perfect finish. Consciously or unconsciously they attract artists with a similar sensibility, artists who have become enamored with their own product, who still believe themselves to be innovating but are in fact only producing; cogs on the wheel of consumerism that values, above all else, shininess.